I used to work in academia and was involved in NSF-funded programs, so I have mixed feelings about this. Waste and inefficiency are rampant. BTW I'm not talking about failed projects or research that were dimmed "not important", but things like buying million-dollar equipment just to use up the budget, which then sits idle.
That said, slashing NSF funding by 50% won’t fix any of that. It’ll just shrink both the waste and the genuinely valuable research proportionally. So it's indeed a serious blow to real scientific progress.
I don’t really have a point, just want to put it here. Also to be fair this kind of inefficiency isn't unique to academia; it’s common anywhere public money is involved.
Research is a human endeavor and as all human endeavors it can be improved. But having personally known NSF funded researchers in the past, I can confidently say these are some of the most dedicated, hard-working people you will ever meet. Most of these people work 60-70 hrs a week for half the salary they could get in industry.
Also, industry is far from perfect too. Think of high-profile failures like the Apple car or Meta’s Metaverse, both of which wasted literally tens of billions of dollars, many times the entire annual NSF budget. Let’s not hold scientists to standards applied no where else.
This is a common saying, and I’m sure there’s some truth to it. But IMHO, the main reason is that PIs just want to use the money.
Because… why not? It's free money. Having the newest shiny equipment, at the very least, boosts your group’s reputation.
Not to mention that straight-up corruption (pocketing funds for personal gain) is not unheard of.
Even considering these inefficiencies, which are certainly to be taken seriously, there aren't a lot of things that have such a high ROI as research and education.
I used to work in academia and was involved in NSF-funded programs, so I have mixed feelings about this. Waste and inefficiency are rampant. BTW I'm not talking about failed projects or research that were dimmed "not important", but things like buying million-dollar equipment just to use up the budget, which then sits idle.
That said, slashing NSF funding by 50% won’t fix any of that. It’ll just shrink both the waste and the genuinely valuable research proportionally. So it's indeed a serious blow to real scientific progress.
I don’t really have a point, just want to put it here. Also to be fair this kind of inefficiency isn't unique to academia; it’s common anywhere public money is involved.